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Our investigation may be furthered by enquiring: Whether light
finally perishes or simply returns to its source.
If it be a thing requiring to be caught and kept, domiciled
within a recipient, we might think of it finally passing out of
existence: if it be an Act not flowing out and away- but in
circuit, with more of it within than is in outward progress from
the luminary of which it is the Act- then it will not cease to
exist as long as that centre is in being. And as the luminary
moves, the light will reach new points- not in virtue of any
change of course in or out or around, but simply because the act
of the luminary exists and where there is no impediment is
effective. Even if the distance of the sun from us were far
greater than it is, the light would be continuous all that
further way, as long as nothing checked or blocked it in the
interval.
We distinguish two forms of activity; one is gathered within the
luminary and is comparable to the life of the shining body; this
is the vaster and is, as it were, the foundation or wellspring of
all the act; the other lies next to the surface, the outer image
of the inner content, a secondary activity though inseparable
from the former. For every existent has an Act which is in its
likeness: as long as the one exists, so does the other; yet while
the original is stationary the activity reaches forth, in some
things over a wide range, in others less far. There are weak and
faint activities, and there are some, even, that do not appear;
but there are also things whose activities are great and
far-going; in the case of these the activity must be thought of
as being lodged, both in the active and powerful source and in
the point at which it settles. This may be observed in the case
of an animal's eyes where the pupils gleam: they have a light
which shows outside the orbs. Again there are living things which
have an inner fire that in darkness shines out when they expand
themselves and ceases to ray outward when they contract: the fire
has not perished; it is a mere matter of it being rayed out or
not.
But has the light gone inward?
No: it is simply no longer on the outside because the fire [of
which it is the activity] is no longer outward going but has
withdrawn towards the centre.
But surely the light has gone inward too?
No: only the fire, and when that goes inward the surface consists
only of the non-luminous body; the fire can no longer act towards
the outer.
The light, then, raying from bodies is an outgoing activity of a
luminous body; the light within luminous bodies- understand; such
as are primarily luminous- is the essential being embraced under
the idea of that body. When such a body is brought into
association with Matter, its activity produces colour: when there
is no such association, it does not give colour- it gives merely
an incipient on which colour might be formed- for it belongs to
another being [primal light] with which it retains its link,
unable to desert from it, or from its [inner] activity.
And light is incorporeal even when it is the light of a body;
there is therefore no question, strictly speaking, of its
withdrawal or of its being present- these terms do not apply to
its modes- and its essential existence is to be an activity. As
an example: the image upon a mirror may be described as an
activity exercised by the reflected object upon the potential
recipient: there is no outgoing from the object [or ingoing into
the reflecting body]; it is simply that, as long as the object
stands there, the image also is visible, in the form of colour
shaped to a certain pattern, and when the object is not there,
the reflecting surface no longer holds what it held when the
conditions were favourable.
So it is with the soul considered as the activity of another and
prior soul: as long as that prior retains its place, its next,
which is its activity, abides.
But what of a soul which is not an activity but the derivative of
an activity- as we maintained the life-principle domiciled in the
body to be- is its presence similar to that of the light caught
and held in material things?
No; for in those things the colour is due to an actual
intermixture of the active element [the light being alloyed with
Matter]; whereas the life-principle of the body is something that
holds from another soul closely present to it.
But when the body perishes- by the fact that nothing without part
in soul can continue in being- when the body is perishing, no
longer supported by that primal life-giving soul, or by the
presence of any secondary phase of it, it is clear that the
life-principle can no longer remain; but does this mean that the
life perishes?
No; not even it; for it, too, is an image of that first
out-shining; it is merely no longer where it was.
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